The present application, filed on or after March 16, 2013, is being examined under the first inventor to file provisions of the AIA .
The following is a quotation of the first paragraph of 35 U.S.C. 112(a):
(a) IN GENERAL.—The specification shall contain a written description of the invention, and of the manner and process of making and using it, in such full, clear, concise, and exact terms as to enable any person skilled in the art to which it pertains, or with which it is most nearly connected, to make and use the same, and shall set forth the best mode contemplated by the inventor or joint inventor of carrying out the invention.
Claims 1-13 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 112(a) as failing to comply with the enablement requirement. The claim(s) contains subject matter which was not described in the specification in such a way as to enable one skilled in the art to which it pertains, or with which it is most nearly connected, to make and/or use the invention. In order to determine compliance with the enablement requirement of 35 U.S.C. 112(a), the Federal Circuit developed a framework of factors in In re Wands, 858 F.2d 731, 737, 8 USPQ2d 1400, 1404 (Fed. Cir. 1988), referred to as the Wands factors to assess whether any necessary experimentation required by the specification is "reasonable" or is "undue." These factors include, but are not limited to:
(A) The breadth of the claims;
(B) The nature of the invention;
(C) The state of the prior art;
(D) The level of one of ordinary skill;
(E) The level of predictability in the art;
(F) The amount of direction provided by the inventor;
(G) The existence of working examples; and
(H) The quantity of experimentation needed to make or use the invention based on the content of the disclosure.
With respect to the breadth of claims aspect both the method and system claims cover methods in which a single gas or a mixture of gases are present in the sample gas. Additionally there are no limits placed on the length of the first second and third periods of the measurement periods or the number of measurement periods that might be needed to identify the sample gas based on the extracted features corresponding to drift in the acquired signal by the identification circuit. The sensor also is generally not limited as long as it interacts with the gas through adsorption of the gas thereon. Thus the method covers a single sensor as well as a combination of sensors
With respect to the nature of the invention, it covers measuring a gas with a sensor that exhibits sensitivity to one or more gases in a sample. The sensitivity to any one gas may be based on the absorption/desorption characteristic of the gas on the sensor and may be different for each gas. Certain gases may interfere with the interaction of other gases and the sensor. Water vapor/humidity is one commonly present gas that may function in this manner by blocking adsorption sites of the sensor.
The state of the prior art included at least the newly cited Chambon (Sensors and Actuators B 1999), Lee (Sensors and Actuators B 2000), Zhang (Sensors and Actuators B 2009), Herran (Sensors and Actuators B 2010), Vergara (SensorKDD '11: Proceedings of the Fifth International Workshop on Knowledge Discovery from Sensor Data 2011), Bastuck (2013 Transducers & Eurosensors XXVII: The 17th International Conference on Solid-State Sensors, Actuators and Microsystems (TRANSDUCERS & EUROSENSORS XXVII) 2013), Liu (International Journal of Intelligent Systems 2015), Liu (Sensors and Actuators B 2019) and Schober (2020 IEEE SENSORS). These references show that measurement periods having first, second and third periods as claimed are known, that there are learned logical models used to identify gases based on features of acquired signal during the measurement period, that modulating the sensor during those measurement periods can lead to gas identification and that sensor drift is generally viewed as a problem to the analysis of gases that needs to be compensated and/or corrected through periodic recalibration and/or trained models.
With respect to the level of one of ordinary skill in the art, that would generally include someone capable of creating the sensor, contacting the sensor with a gas during a measurement period as claimed, acquiring the signal during the measurement period, and creating/training a learned logical model.
With respect to the predictability of the art, the above cited art shows that there is a certain amount of predictability in the art. However, sensor drift is not always predictable depending on its cause. The presence of water/humidity or other competing/interfering compounds in the gas sample may interact with the sensor and/or have effects on the acquired signal that is not predictable. The predictability of learned logical models capable of identifying single isolated gases from acquired sensor signals is variable at best when gas mixture are contacted with the sensor. The complexity the gas/sensor interaction and the acquired signal increases as the number of different gases in the sample increases. Depending of the source of a gas sample, rapid changes in the amount of gas are possible, some such concentration changes would be on a timescale that is shorter than the measurement period (i.e., a breath cycle that repeats every 5 to 10 second would be difficult to predictably/reliably measure with a sensor requiring a measurement period of 30 seconds or more. Examiner notes that instant paragraph [0150] of the originally filed specification clearly teaches that the number of times the identification was incorrect was high for the identification of sample gas D and sample gas E in the example given in the instant disclosure. In other words the methods could not reliably identify two of the five gases tested in that example.
With respect to the amount of direction provided by the inventor, the steps are explained generally.
With respect to the presence of working examples, there is one showing that the five gases can be correctly identified in some cases when they are not in a mixture using a plurality of different sensors. There is nothing showing that the gases could be identified using only a single sensor or in binary or ternary mixtures or in the presence of a potential interferent such as water vapor.
With respect to the extent of experimentation needed, it would most likely require additional experiments with mixtures of the compounds that one might expect to see together over the range of concentrations that would be expected to be present in the mixtures as well as in the presence of potential interferents to train the learned logical model. It might also require changing the sensor types and/or numbers to change and/or increase the interactions to be modeled by the learned logical model. However, due to the difficulty of identifying at least two of the tested gases and the reduced concentration of the individual gases in a mixture, the difficulty of finding features in the acquired signal would be expected to also increase. Moreover, because that difficulty was experience using a plurality of different sensors, one of ordinary skill in the art would have had a low expectation of being able to identify the gases with a single sensor. That would decrease the expectation that the method would work for gases that are difficult to distinguish when the gas is not mixed as well as decrease the effectiveness of being able to identify any of the gases in a mixture. Because there are a plethora of potential sensing materials and sensors, the reduced expectation of success would place an undue experimental burden for one attempting to practice the claimed invention over the scope being claimed. Thus the claims are not enabled for the scope being claimed.
Claims 4 and 10-11 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 112(b) or 35 U.S.C. 112 (pre-AIA ), second paragraph, as being indefinite for failing to particularly point out and distinctly claim the subject matter which the inventor or a joint inventor (or for applications subject to pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 112, the applicant), regards as the invention. With respect to claim 4, it is not clear if applicant is attempting to claim that the signal is acquired by a neural network or a remote network. In claims 10-11, third values are acquired, however first and second values are not defined by either claim 1 or claims 10 or 11. Thus it is not clear if claims 10 or 11 are not properly dependent on a claim that defines/acquires first and second values or if the “third values” language is either first values or simply values.
An art rejection is not being made for the following reason(s). The art of record fails to teach and/or fairly suggest that features corresponding to sensor drift as described in the instant disclosure present in signal acquired during one or a plurality of consecutive measurement periods as claimed contains information that can be extracted and used to identify different gases with a learned logical model. As noted above, the art of record generally sees sensor drift as a problem to be corrected, compensated, modeled and/or recalibrated against so that other features from the acquired signal can be used to identify the gas being sensed.
The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure. The additionally cited art relates to methods and systems for identifying and measuring gases with sensors that interact with gases through adsorption and desorption.
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to Arlen Soderquist whose telephone number is (571)272-1265. The examiner can normally be reached 1st week Monday-Thursday, 2nd week Monday-Friday.
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If attempts to reach the examiner by telephone are unsuccessful, the examiner’s supervisor, Lyle Alexander can be reached at (571)272-1254. The fax phone number for the organization where this application or proceeding is assigned is 571-273-8300.
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/ARLEN SODERQUIST/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 1797
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